Theresa Maughan is the New Jersey 2022 Teacher of the Year and a forty-year veteran.  The insight, wisdom, and guidance she shared is priceless for any educator. We learn how her experience teaching 6th grade prior to moving into high school had a large impact on her instructional practices today. She is a strong focus on how relationships in the classroom will have a direct impact on the content delivery of her classroom.

• Her first moment of standing in front of students, and how she almost panicked out of the position.

• The process of building relationships and understanding them culturally to connect the content directly to them.

• As a history teacher, we are story tellers.  We shouldn’t be afraid to share how those stories connect to us personally. Theresa shares her story as an immigrant, the challenges she faced, and how her teachers helped her.

• Providing students access to primary resources so they can form their own perspectives on a topic.

• Structured academic controversy is a process Theresa uses to encourage students to evaluate topics with the use of primary resource documents.

• When forming relationships with students, there is a line we can’t cross.  However, it is important to push ourselves towards that line so we open up to students as much as possible.

• How to differentiate with primary resources.

• Teaching students sourcing and corroboration.  Learning how to evaluate a source and search for bias and did you find the information in more than one source.